Poetry Month Prompt #16

April 16:

Choose a poem you’ve written but aren’t satisfied with. Read it and try and figure out what you
don’t like about it. Either pick out a line you like and use that as a starting point, or rewrite the
poem focusing on sounds and imagery. Revise, revise, revise!

From the Muse library: Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets
by Ted Kooser. “Appointed U. S. Poet Laureate in 2004, Ted Kooser has been writing and
publishing poetry for more than sixty years. In the pages of The Poetry Home Repair Manual,
Kooser brings those decades of experience to bear. Here are tools and insights, the instructions
(and warnings against instructions) that poets—aspiring or practicing—can use to hone their
craft, perhaps into art. Using examples from his own rich literary oeuvre and from the work of
a number of successful contemporary poets, the author schools us in the critical relationship
between poet and reader, which is fundamental to what Kooser believes is poetry’s ultimate
purpose: to reach other people and touch their hearts. Much more than a guidebook to writing
and revising poems, this manual has all the comforts and merits of a long and enlightening
conversation with a wise and patient old friend—a friend who is willing to share everything he’s
learned about the art he’s spent a lifetime learning to execute so well.